Fly
I'm excited to share this special and personal shoot from our visit home to Minnesota in July. I grew up in a family of pilots. My grandpa, uncle, and my dad were all airline pilots, and they all started flying in their teen years. My dad was flying planes by the age of 15 which to this day totally blows my mind. He had a long career with North Central and then Northwest Airlines before retiring a few years ago. He's always been so passionate about his work that as a kid I never saw his trips as "work". It was his hobby too. On his days off, he would often head to the hanger to take a ride, care for his plane, and drink coffee with his pilot buddies. Growing up it was always clear to me that his passion and his job were one in the same. He's the person who's always told me that if I do what I love, I'll never work a day in my life. It's the best advice I've ever gotten and so much of why I abandoned my corporate career to start my styling business. Now that he's retired, he still spends his days flying his plane which I have to admit is quite a beauty. We couldn't help ourselves and just had to do a little photo shoot with it. I even got to play dress-up with Dad's old Ray-Ban aviators (which lucky for me he's now handed down to me) and pins. A little about the plane: It's a Stearman biplane, built in 1941 to spend the years of World War 2 teaching Army Air Force cadets how to fly in the US before they moved on to fly fighters and bombers in Europe and the Pacific. Dad says, "Today, 72 years later, it's still fun to fly, but I realize it's also an honor to be the caretaker of an artifact from that era!" It makes me happy that my dad has gotten to do what he's passionate about, and it was so fun to spend a day with him combining the things we both love so much.
